Arnold Mayersohn, left, chairman of the board of Sterling Stores Inc., with company co-founder Dave Grundfest Sr. and President Dave Grundfest Jr. in 1971, eight years before a plane crash marked the beginning of the end.

This undated photo shows the Sterling store in Newport, where Sam Walton had his first store, the competing Ben Franklin outlet.

It's easy to forget now, but Wal-Mart wasn't always the dominant discount retailer in the world. As late as 1979, the Bentonville chain arguably wasn't even the dominant Arkansas discounter. That effectively changed the morning of Friday, Dec. 21, 1979, when a Cessna 421 twin-engine plane carrying three vice presidents of Sterling Stores Inc. slammed into a fog-covered hill 4 miles southwest of Locust Grove, near Batesville.